Photos: UN BALLO IN MASCHERA at San Francisco Opera

San Francisco Opera opened its 102nd season on Friday, September 6 with Giuseppe Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. Caroline H. Hume Music Director Eun Sun Kim leads the Company’s first presentation of Un Ballo in Maschera (The Masked Ball) since 2014 in Italian director Leo Muscato’s staging for the Rome Opera which has never been presented outside of Europe. Check out production photos below!

The international cast is headed by a nucleus of leading operatic stage artists. Michael Fabiano portrays Gustavus III, the Swedish king whose 1792 assassination at a masked ball in Stockholm’s opera house was the spark that fired Verdi’s imagination to create the opera. The role of Amelia is performed by Armenian soprano Lianna Haroutounian.  Completing Ballo’s love triangle is Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Renato. Mei Gui Zhang returns as Oscar, the king’s page. Judit Kutasi returns this season as the mysterious fortune teller, Ulrica. Portraying the co-conspirators who plot to assassinate the king are bass Adam Lau as Samuel and current San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow bass-baritone Jongwon Han as Tom. Tenor Christopher Oglesby is the Chief Magistrate and current Adler Fellows Samuel Kidd and Thomas Kinch take on the roles of Christiano and Amelia’s servant, respectively.

San Francisco Opera first presented Un Ballo in Maschera in 1931 and returned to it in 1937 and 1940, a period when Verdi’s opera was rarely heard on any other American opera stage. The Company has presented the opera in 18 previous seasons, typically with casts featuring the art form’s luminaries. Two artists who are closely associated with Un Ballo in Maschera, both on stage and recordings, made their role debuts in the opera with San Francisco Opera: soprano Leontyne Price sang her first Amelia here in 1965 and tenor Luciano Pavarotti portrayed King Gustavus for the first time in 1971.

Sung in Italian with English supertitles, the remaining performances of Un Ballo in Maschera are scheduled for September 11 (7:30 p.m.), 15 (2 p.m.), 18 (7:30 p.m.), 21 (7:30 p.m.), 24 (7:30 p.m.), 27 (7:30 p.m.), 2024.